Known for the chart-topping singles “Sunshine” and “Shanty,” Edwards has been making honest and upbeat music for more than 45 years. He has explored country, bluegrass, rock, blues and folk. Tom Snow, pianist and director of the Bates Jazz Band, is a member of Edwards’ band, as is prominent Maine mandolinist Joe Walsh.

“An Edwards performance is an unforgettable roller-coaster ride which combines his remarkable singing, storytelling and wit,” wrote a reviewer for the Martha’s Vineyard Times.

Music City News praised Edwards’ throaty tenor as “one of the most distinctive voices on record,” distinguished by its “natural, unadulterated, undiluted quality.”

Since 1971, Edwards has released 15 albums, including Blue Ridge, his standard-setting collaboration with bluegrass favorites the Seldom Scene, and Little Hands, his collection of children’s songs, which was honored with a National Library Association award.

His most recent release is Jonathan Edwards Top 40, a two-disc, four-decade compilation of his most-requested performances, digitally remastered. His 2011 release My Love Will Keep, Edwards’ first studio album in 14 years, combined originals and covers in a co-production by Jonathan and Jim Begley.

In 2008, Media Artists released a 90-minute documentary of Edwards’ life and career titled That’s What Our Life Is.

Don Campbell.

Joining Edwards at Bates is a regional favorite, singer-songwriter Campbell. Based in both Maine and Nashville, Campbell explores contemporary folk, country and rock.

Campbell’s music taps adult contemporary, country, Celtic and rock. He cites as inspiration artists ranging from the Beatles to Vince Gill to Stephen King. A particular influence is the late American folk artist Dan Fogelberg.

Campbell has opened for, amongst others, Carrie Underwood, Willie Nelson, Keith Urban and George Jones. He was named Maine’s Best Singer-Songwriter in the Maine Sunday Telegram’s Annual Readers Poll six times.

Campbell has released 13 CDs, including his critically acclaimed tribute to Fogelberg, Kites to Fly, and this year’s The Dust Never Settles.

The Winter Jazz Fest features the Thomas Snow Quartet, led by Maine pianist Tom Snow,and C-Funk, a group composed of Bates students. Admission is $6. Tickets are available at www.batestickets.com. For more information, please contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Snow is one of New England’s most versatile and sought-after musicians. He is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and the Berklee College of Music. He has recorded on the Telarc and Origin labels and has three CDs as a leader: Northern Standard Time (1997), Christmas at Mast Cove (2001) and Some Other Time (2007). He directs the Bates Jazz Band and has been a lecturer at the college since 2003.

Snow’s career has included international tours, including travel in Australia and throughout the United States with noted Irish tenor John McNally, and engagements at the Ritz Carlton Resort in Amelia Island, Fla., Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and the Mount Washington Grand Resort. The other members of the quartet are saxophonist Matt Langley, bassist Rick McLaughlin and drummer Phil McGowan.

Bates College presents Harry Allen, a New York jazzman whose tenor sax work was called “nothing less than perfect” by guitarist John Pizzarelli, in concert at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 8, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Allen performs with a trio led by pianist Tom Snow of the Bates faculty. Sponsored by the music department, the concert is open to the public at no cost. For more information contact 207-786-6135 or olinarts@bates.edu.

Represented by the Swing Bros. label, Allen has more than 30 recordings to his name. Three of his CDs have won Gold Disc Awards from Japan’s Swing Journal Magazine, and his 2004 Tenors Anyone? (which features Pizzarelli) won both the Gold Disc Award and Swing Journal’s New Star Award.

Allen’s recordings have made the Top 10 list for favorite new releases in Swing Journal Magazine’s reader’s poll and Jazz Journal International’s critic’s poll for 1997, and Eu Nao Quero Dancar (I Won’t Dance), the third Gold Disc Award winner, was voted second for album of the year for 1998 in a Swing Journal readers poll.

The Harry Allen–Joe Cohn Quartet won the New York Nightlife Award for Outstanding Jazz Combo Performance of 2006 and was nominated for Best Jazz Combo by the Jazz Journalists Association for that year.

Allen was born in Washington, D.C., in 1966, and was raised in Los Angeles and in Rhode Island. He received a bachelor of arts degree in music in 1988 from Rutgers University and currently resides in New York City.

Allen is accompanied at Bates by pianist Snow, bassist Marshall Wood and drummer Les Harris Jr. Director of the Bates College Jazz Band, Snow is one of Maine’s most versatile and sought-after musicians. A graduate of the New England Conservatory and the Berklee College of Music, Snow has played with such jazz luminaries as Dave Holland, Greg Abate, Larry Coryell, John Lockwood and Herb Pomeroy. He has recorded on the Telarc and Origin labels and has two CDs as a leader: Christmas at Mast Cove (2001), and Northern Standard Time (1997).

One of them classical, the other jazz, two concerts feature standout Maine pianists this weekend at Bates College.

Frank Glazer, a resident artist at Bates College since 1980 and perhaps Maine’s best-known pianist, plays a program including music by Arnold Schoenberg, with whom he studied, at 8 p.m. Friday, April 28, in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, 75 Russell St.

Also in Olin, a quartet led by Portland pianist Tom Snow kicks off three weeks of jazz concerts at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 29.

Both concerts (and the additional concerts described below) are free and open to the public. For more information, please call 207-786-6135.

Glazer’s program includes “Sechs Kleine Klavierstücke” (“Six Little Piano Pieces”; Op. 19) a 1911 work by Schoenberg, one of the pioneers of modern art music and the tone-row method of composition. Glazer, sent at age 17 to Berlin by a patron to study with the great pianist Artur Schnabel, also studied counterpoint with Schoenberg during that time, shortly before the composer fled the Nazis and went to America.

Also on the program are Franz Schubert’s Sonata in A minor (D. 845), Johannes Brahms’ Waltzes (Op. 39), and three works by Frederic Chopin: Berceuse (Op. 57), Impromptu in G-flat Major (Op. 51) and Scherzo in C-sharp Minor (Op. 39).

Director of the Bates College Jazz Band and a member of the music faculty, Tom Snow is one of Maine’s most versatile and sought-after musicians. For the April 29 show, the Tom Snow Quartet will explore the classic 20th-century standards often referred to as the “great American songbook.” Joining Snow are saxophonist Ralph Norris; bassist Marshall Wood; and drummer Les Harris Jr.

The Snow event and three other jazz performances in the coming weeks constitute the Olin Arts Center Jazz Concert Series: a trio headed by saxophonist David Wells on Friday, May 5; music by composer-bassist Sam Sherry with his band Ursa Major on Friday, May 19; and an evening of guitar-driven standards by the Ken Labrecque Quartet on Saturday, May 20.

An additional jazz program in Olin, independent of the series, features a trio led by jazz guitarist Sheryl Bailey at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 6.

Glazer, 90, is an artist of international stature who taught at the Eastman School of Music for 15 years before retiring to Maine with his wife, Ruth, in 1980. The couple founded the Saco River Festival, which is held in Cornish every summer. Frank Glazer’s long career includes numerous recordings, his own television program in the 1950s and countless solo recitals and performances with orchestras and chamber ensembles, including the New England Piano Quartette, of which he was a founder.

A graduate of the New England Conservatory and the Berklee College of Music, Snow has played with such jazz luminaries as Dave Holland, Greg Abate, Larry Coryell, John Lockwood and Herb Pomeroy. He has recorded on the Telarc and Origin labels and has two CDs as a leader: Christmas at Mast Cove (2001), and Northern Standard Time (1997).

Along with Wells himself, the David Wells Trio includes two other figures well-known in Maine’s jazz scene: guitarist Tony Gaboury and drummer Steve Grover. The threesome will perform music from their upcoming CD, along with compositions by such pioneers as Charlie Parker.

Wells has performed in the United States and Europe with artists such as Rosemary Clooney, Lionel Hampton, Dee Dee Bridgewater, the Count Basie Orchestra and John Handy. Wells and Grover are both members of the Bates music faculty, and Wells directs the Westbrook High School Jazz Band.

Sheryl Baileywho performs at Bates as part of a six-day residency connected with the Short Term course “Exploring Jazz Guitar,” is ranked among the foremost bop-based guitarists to emerge in the 1990s. Her trio, the Sheryl Bailey Three, includes Gary Versace on Hammond B3 and Ian Froman on drums, and conjures the essence of the Grant Green/Larry Young/Elvin Jones band of the late 1960s.

The Olin jazz series closes with the Ken Labrecque Quartet, the music of Coltrane, Parker, Rollins and others. Bates guitar instructor for more than 20 years, Labrecque will be joined by Maine musicians Richard Hollis, drummer; Greg Lindholm, bassist; and Darren Whitney, saxophonist.

Labrecque has been an artist in residence at the Turner Alternative School and has taught guitar at the Maine Jazz Camp and at Fryeburg, Gould and Hebron academies. He teaches at the University of Maine at Farmington as well as at Bates. He is currently recording an album of jazz standards and classical works.